Food for Thought
by Abicion
Summary: gg Neeba.


Fatina was in trouble. The roper that had burst from the dungeon floor and caught all three members of her party by surprise now held her in the air. The monster's tentacles bound her in place as they traversed over her black combat dress and explored the many curves of her body. Her weapon (an odd combination of a lance and a flamethrower) had escaped her hands at the moment of the surprise attack and now lay far from her reach. She screamed as her two male accomplices watched idly from the ground below.

"Shouldn't we help her?"

Jil, the more chivalrous of the two young men, shyly questioned his partner. Neeba responded with stars of excitement in his eyes and a bit of drool on his lip.

"In a minute! We're about the see the good part!"

Fatina's fear of her captor was quickly transforming into anger toward her colleagues. She thrashed with her arms and legs as one tentacle stroked her cheek with seemingly tender care and another began trekking through a dangerous part of her inner thigh. A scowl of disgust appeared on her face before she shook her head vigorously, causing her pale blonde hair to whisk about through the air. After another round of futile squirms, she finally addressed her audience through grit teeth.

"What are you doing? Get this thing off me, you morons!"

Sadly, none of the three adventurers were apt enough in roper biology to realize the tentacle closest to Fatina's face had deposited a tiny larva in her ear as it passed over her cheek. The infant creature was now secreting a natural anesthetic as it happily burrowed toward its new home in Fatina's central nervous system.

The captured heroine felt herself being overcome by sudden drowsiness, which she blamed on a tentacle that had found its way around her throat and restricted her breathing. Before she blacked out entirely, she looked down again to see a blurry vision of Jil still watching in puzzled shock, and Neeba with a beaming grin on his face. She muttered weakly as her eyelids slowly fell.

"Damn... you..."

Neeba was brought out of his lewd daydream by the image of Fatina suddenly becoming deathly limp in the roper's "arms." At last, he drew his sword as he shouted to Jil.

"Crap, I didn't think it would strangle her! We have to kill this thing right now!"

Jil followed suit, and the two warriors quickly dashed forward to slay the roper and rescue their comrade. Once she was freed, Fatina fell to the floor and landed beside her weapon in an oddly statuesque kneeling position. Jil and Neeba soon finished their hunt, leaving the roper's motionless, sponge-like body severed of all its appendages as black ichor seeped from each of its wounds. They then both turned and approached their female teammate.

Fatina was still kneeling on one knee when they reached her. Her head was sunken downward and her long hair obscured most of her face. She was clearly breathing, however, and Neeba smiled warmly as he reached out and placed one of his hands on Fatina's shoulder.

"Are you okay, Fatina? Sorry I got carried away..."

The girl made no response, and instead began moving her lips in a bizarre manner as she continued to stare at the floor. An experienced lipreader would have been able to see she was silently mouthing various words. The roper's offspring had now fully integrated itself with Fatina's brain, and it was becoming accustomed to human muscle control as it scanned her memories to learn her language.

Neeba reacted to Fatina's strange actions with a bewildered look. He turned back to Jil before speaking in dread.

"I think something's wrong with her. We better find a heal-..."

Before he could finish his statement, Fatina made an unexpected move. With remarkable reflex, she reached to the ground, pointed her staff to Neeba's chest, and pulled a trigger located on the device's underside. A great fireball burst from the weapon's barrel, blasting through Neeba's torso and leaving a large, smoldering hole through his middle. His eyes widened with shock, and he promptly toppled dead to the ground. When she turned her attention to Jil, he could see her face was twisted in a devious grin.

Jil recoiled in horror and pushed himself away from Fatina, sliding across the dungeon floor in a seated position. He struggled to speak as she prepared her firearm for another attack.

"Fatina, what are you doing? We... we were just joking!"

Fatina responded by tilting her head curiously and blinking.

"Who's Fatina?"

Her eyes gazed downward and to the side in thought. When her attention returned to Jil, her smirk resumed.

"Oh, that must be the host's name. I put her to sleep for a while."

Her ominous glance changed to a childish smile before she continued.

"I'll have to thank her when she wakes up. I wouldn't have been able to kill you and your friend without her help."

While Jil remained paralyzed with fear, Fatina quickly aimed her staff and fired again. Jil met his destiny that day by being barbecued in a wall of flame.

Fatina rose back to her feet and carefully placed her staff in a small holster on her back. She sighed in relief upon studying the two smoking corpses on the ground, but her expression became much sadder when she turned her head to the deceased roper. She walked forward to pay her respects, struggling with the high heels of her armored feet for the first few steps. Upon reaching the beast's oozing remains, she spoke in a gentle voice.

"Don't worry, mommy. I'll make all the humans pay."

One of her hands curled into an angered fist when she finished. She then began her journey back to the dungeon's entrance, back to the civilized world.


End file.
